Advice on combating blackhat within an organisation

[goodersuk]

Hello,

I have an unsual challenge I would appriciate some feedback from the community.

I have been managing the digital marketing for a UK franchise for around three years. My approach has been to try and keep to the priciple of one microsite per franchisee - listing only the serviced locations once as appropriate.

Now this franchise has been aquired by a US company and a new marketing manager for the US company is overseeing the site - why I am still involved is unkown and is a matter of time I supsect.

This marketing 'guru' is clearly blackhat and is pushing agaisnt my eithical, brand driven approach in favor of creating landing pages for pretty much every location. I can see from the other brands he manages - this has been his approach --- boiler plate content and fake addresses (complete with schema markeup) for every location and and additional websites per actual valid location (so 2x listings per term for same brand)

My question is how do I go about combating this - or is it a lost cause? I feel responsible for the success of the franchisees.

Thanks in advance.

Steve

[goodersuk]

Thanks James

It is frustrating that Google rewards such practices, and as the sites in question operate around lower volume search terms I dont see this changing any time soon.

The argument has been, 'look at how well we are doing with these other sites - how can it be wrong'..... its difficult to educate managment on the risks when the current data proves the wrong way works.

I wonder if anybody on here has been in a similar spot and managed to result in some form of win?

Thanks again.